Something has gone haywire in the California Democratic Party. It is supposed to be the party that cares about poor families, blue-collar workers and the unemployed – allegedly unlike the Republican Party, which Democrats regularly disparage as being devoted to the wealthy and indifferent to economic suffering.

But in Sacramento, the policies pursued by the Democrats who control the Legislature could scarcely be more hostile to what are supposed to be its prime constituencies. Increasingly extreme environmental laws have created a depression in Central Valley farming communities. These laws, high taxes and heavy regulation in general threaten to drive away nearly all the state’s manufacturing and heavy-industry jobs – even though these jobs, because they pay relatively well and don’t require college degrees, are idealized in Democratic rhetoric as providing struggling families a crucial path to realizing the American dream.

Instead, Democratic lawmakers care first and foremost about public employees and expanding the public sector of the economy. They are indifferent, even hostile, to the idea that the state should help the private sector.

Even with state unemployment higher than 12 percent, this attitude was on display once again this week.

The occasion was the release of a 27-bill “jobs agenda” package by the Senate Democratic Caucus. Instead of helping the state’s reeling private sector, however, the Democrats’ blueprint is almost entirely focused on using taxpayer funds to create government-paid positions. The primary method is bills that would hasten bond spending.

The only significant job-training measures involve “green” positions that even the most optimistic reports say will represent a tiny fraction of employment.

In the entire package, there is only one measure – by Sen. Denise Ducheny, D-San Diego – that has the goal of spurring broad private-sector growth: It would create a “one-stop” shop at Cal-EPA to help businesses promptly get projects through the permit process.

Meanwhile, state Republicans’ proposals to use tax credits and to temporarily ease green regulations to encourage job creation were ignored.

The contrast with parallel efforts in Washington, D.C., is striking. This week, President Barack Obama said he welcomed GOP suggestions on how to encourage job growth, in particular with tax incentives for small businesses and with regulatory relief. In Congress, Democrats from Farm Belt and Rust Belt states are siding with Republicans – tacitly and otherwise – in opposing for now a new “cap-and-trade” law to reduce the emissions that contribute to global warming. They say the economy is just not healthy enough to sustain a forced shift to cleaner but much costlier energy – and that it makes more sense for the world’s largest economies to make such a shift simultaneously so the United States would not be left at a competitive disadvantage.

In Sacramento, however, the dominant narrative holds that forcing every last California business, government, nonprofit and family to pay more for energy will somehow spur an economic boom.

This much is safe to say: If California’s economy ever rebounds, it won’t be thanks to the Legislature.